How Long Do You Want to Be Loved?
by JoBethMegAmy. my homegirls
Summary: tumblr prompt: "Wouldn't it be sweet if Jane confessed her true feelings about Maura to the baby while Maura overheard the conversation on the baby monitor?" I agreed that yes, it would, so here's my take on that. Fluffy one-shot!


**A/N**: So, someone on tumblr left this idea in my inbox this morning, and I decided I wanted to give it a shot! I know there have been a lot of Rizzles-baby fics already, so if somebody's kind of done this already, sorry! This is just my take on the scenario, which frankly I needed someone to give me because I couldn't think of what to do with these guys and a baby.  
Also, this is a **one-shot**, and it's going to stay that way. Reviews are appreciated, but just know **there is no more to the story**. Oh and by the way, I named the baby Tony after that Antonio guy Maura said she wanted to marry for inventing the autopsy. :)

* * *

Jane was the one with the erratic sleep schedule, the one who could be up and alert at the drop of a hat if needs be, no matter how deeply asleep she had been. Contrarily, it seemed as though Maura could sleep through just about anything. The baby's crying used to jar her out of her sleep as well, but once her subconscious had gotten accustomed to it being a recurring nightly noise, she had somehow been able to effectively tune it out.

It had been a long, lazy Sunday and the baby hadn't been too fussy about going to sleep. In fact, he gave Jane more rest than usual by waiting until just after 3:20 in the morning to start crying loudly. Jane's eyes opened almost instantly after the cries resonated in the baby monitor by her head. She felt a little groggier than usual, which accounted for why she tripped over Bass in the hallway instead of sidestepping him like she usually did.

"Dammit, old man," she yawned, getting clumsily back to her feet. She took a large step over him, opening the door to the baby's room. "We need to get Tony a watch _dog_, not a watch tortoise. At least a dog would've had courtesy to step out of the way."

After that hiccup, Jane fell back into routine, as if her walk was choreographed: she stooped over Antonio's crib, picked him up in the least awkward fashion possible, then turned and sat in the old wooden rocking chair that was only two steps away.

Jane had never really considered herself the mothering type. Even as a kid, she grew a fast reputation for being the only girl on the block who refused to babysit. Her own brothers she could handle (barely) because they were family, and she felt no obligation to be particularly courteous to them. Other people's children were a whole different ball game, though, especially if they were babies: she hated how she'd just be getting comfortable when suddenly he would start crying, or he would need a diaper changed, or one of his siblings would start harassing him, and it was always up to the babysitter to solve the problem. Her temper was short-fused, as was her patience. What she had disliked the most about babies was their inability to communicate, at least verbally: you could scold a toddler and have him understand what he did wrong; a kid could at least tell you what he'd been _trying _to do if you caught him doing something he shouldn't. But a baby would just cry or laugh or stare at you silently in some sort of awkward showdown as you rambled on in a language he couldn't understand.

So she'd given up.

It was so different now. As an adult, Jane still hadn't felt very comfortable around babies, but something had changed when she saw the boy Lydia had left on Maura's doorstep. Her first instinct normally would have been to run out to the street and chase down whoever had physically dropped off the baby—whether he (or Lydia) was on foot or in a car, Jane would've done her best to hunt him down for abandoning the child. But when she had looked down and seen that baby boy, something in her changed. In retrospect it seemed a little weird, still: she didn't know if it was her nephew or half-brother, but the point was that he was family. He was her blood. He needed someone.

"You needed Maura, though, didn't you?" she yawned, slowly rocking in the chair. Tony's crying had diminished significantly, as it usually did when Jane was the one to pick him up. "She's more the mothering type than me, don't you think?"

She talked to him often. What she had taken for granted about babies as a kid was now something she thrived on: she loved being able to talk with someone who could just be a listening board, who wouldn't be able to judge her or even entirely understand. He would listen with his eyes wide, often with his hand wrapped around one of Jane's fingers. Whether Tommy or Frank was the father, Tony definitely looked like a Rizzoli.

"I hope you don't think I mind," Jane murmured. "I used to think I would. I mean, about your waking up at all hours of the night. And yeah, sometimes I think how nice it'd be to just be able to sleep for a few hours straight again, but… y'know my job, Tony? Sometimes I get phone calls really late or really early, all about work. Murders, crimes, death." She sighed heavily, fighting off the temptation to nod off herself. "Really gruesome, unpleasant stuff. Now I wouldn't say I'm _thrilled _when I hear you crying in the night and I have to get up, but… I dunno. If I have to be woken up at all in the middle of the night, I'd rather it be because you need me than because BPD needs me. You're a good reason to get up. A happy one."

Tony's eyes were drooping shut, and in the early days, Jane had mistakenly taken this as a cue that it was safe to lie him down again. Now she knew she still had to wait and rock a little bit more, waiting for him to fall entirely back asleep.

"But this time," she whispered, "I think I'd have liked to sleep a little longer, Tony. Know why? I was having _such _an amazing dream. Do you know what dreams are? Do babies have them?"

It almost looked as though he winked at her.

"Well anyway, it was one of those times where I actually didn't know I was having a dream," Jane went on. "Everything seemed normal: Ma put you to bed, then she left for the guest house, and Maura took a shower and I watched a bit of the game on TV. And then, Tony, Maura came to get me in that nice silk robe she's got, and she brought me to bed… and we were just lying there, like we usually do, and she started kissing me."

Tony's grip on her finger slackened, and Jane pretended that it was because he was so shocked to hear this.

"I know! Crazy, right? The craziest part about it though was how much I—well, not even how much I liked it, but just how _natural _it seemed. We didn't get up to any funny business, now. Just some kissing, and then she turned off the light, and that was that. She fell asleep with her arm resting over my stomach, and it just …it felt so right. So amazing. When I woke up, I almost felt like crying right along with you!"

Tony's fingers slipped completely free of Jane's.

"You don't really appreciate at this age what an incredible woman she is," Jane said reverently. "Sometimes I feel sorry, Tony, that you've got my family's genes and not hers. You've experienced her kindness and her sweetness, but you don't know how smart she is. You don't know how funny she can be, how invested she is in making our community the best place it can be. You can't appreciate how beautiful she is."

For a moment, Jane contemplated what Tony would look like with a lighter head of hair, and some hazel eyes.

"Nah," she decided. "Your face was made for Rizzoli features, my friend. I hope you're a brave boy, Tony. Not like me. I mean, well, obviously I'm not a boy, but… I wish I was braver when it came to Maura. D'you think she'd freak if I asked her out? I mean, who knows?" She sighed again, standing up carefully. "Maybe if I did, I could have something better than a dream."

With the precision passed on from her on mother, Jane laid Tony back in the crib. She crept out the door, keeping a careful eye for Bass this time. When she walked back to Maura's room, she was surprised to see a small light on inside. It turned out to be Maura, who was sitting upright in bed and looking thoughtfully at her laptop.

"Uh, Maura?" Jane asked tiredly, stifling a yawn as she walked inside. "What're you doing up?"

"I'm looking at my schedule for this week."

Jane sank back onto her side of the bed. "Um…"

"I'm free Tuesday night."

"Free for what?"

Maura closed the laptop and looked over at Jane. "For wherever it is you want to take me."

When this sunk in, Jane's eyes shot open and she sat up again. Her gaze darted over to the baby monitor, which she realized with a jolt was still on. Which, _duh_. She had always just assumed that Maura was asleep when she, Jane, went into the baby's room- because she always was, right? She hadn't ever overheard Jane's ramblings in there before, right? Or had she just never commented on them until now? Jane's first instinct was to freak out over what Maura must have overheard, but it had sounded just now as if Maura wanted to go on a date… right?

"Uh, Maura…"

"I woke up when you tripped over Bass in the hallway," Maura said.

"Are you kidding? You can sleep through Tony screaming his lungs out, but you wake up when I do a three-point landing on your floor down the hall?"

Maura shrugged. "That sums it up pretty well, I suppose. Now I just would like to know how serious you were about that proposition."

"What proposition?"

"Asking me out."

Jane tried her best to make out Maura's expression in the dark. Her tone was light but not to the point that she was treating this like a joke. If it wasn't for that warm and inviting tone, Jane might have tried to backpedal out of this, lie about her feelings. But Maura sounded eager. Excited.

"Tuesday, huh?" Jane asked.

Maura smiled. "Would that work for you?"

Jane couldn't even come up with a snarky response. "It'd be perfect."

And like a schoolgirl with a crush, Jane felt herself blushing as Maura reached for her hand under the sheets and gave her cheek a quick kiss. "I'm looking forward to it."


End file.
